Former FA chairman Lord Triesman believes Chelsea captain John Terry’s ban for racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand should have been the same length as Liverpool striker Luis Suarez’s for abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra.
Terry was banned for four games and fined £220,000 for his comments made in the Blues’ 1-0 defeat to the QPR at Loftus Road in October 2011.
However, Triesman feels Terry has gotten off lightly considering the punishment handed to Suarez following his abuse of Evra, when he was banned for eight games.
The FA commission concluded as Terry received a lesser punishment because the “racist insult was issued only once”.
Triesman told the BBC: “I couldn’t understand why the sanction was different for a Liverpool player and for John Terry.”
“It may be when you look at all the detail they thought there were reasons for [it]. I can’t see it.”
Terry now has the option to appeal his fine and ban but Triesman feels it would be unwise for the England captain to do so and believes he should accept his punishment and apologise.
“He’s within his rights to appeal. My own view is that it would be more sensible to apologise and accept it’s not a good standard,” Triesman added.
“I just don’t believe in this day and age that anybody can think that it’s OK, and that you don’t owe an apology, not least to the other player.”
The former FA chairman also believes it is now time to include code of conducts in players’ contracts in the wake of Ashley Cole’s Twitter outburst against English football’s governing body.
“What I think is important is for clubs to tell their very highly paid employees what general standards are expected of them on the pitch or in the training ground,” he continued.
“Every club should set those standards and say: ‘Here’s a set of standards we expect you to stick to’.
“Some clubs have done elements of it, but what hasn’t happened is saying to people: ‘What you’ve done off the field impacts on our brand’, and that should have been said years ago.
“Contracts have subsidiary documents of all kinds which get attached all the time, and I don’t see any good reason why a general code of conduct in relation to people who are absolutely in the spotlight all the time should not be part of that.”